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Post by Digi on Jul 9, 2020 23:30:36 GMT
Just got done - that was enjoyable! I feel like I need to give it another listen or two though. All the characters were definitely distinct, but there's such a big supporting cast in this that I feel like I didn't quite absorb all of the stories going on. I'm not sure yet how this setting carries on for an additional 12 hours, but I am excited to find out!
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melkur
Chancellery Guard
Likes: 3,967
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Post by melkur on Jul 9, 2020 23:51:29 GMT
Welcome to the family. I apologize in advance, some of us can be a bit weird. HEY! I, uh, resemble that remark...
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Post by tuigirl on Jul 10, 2020 7:35:59 GMT
Welcome to the family. I apologize in advance, some of us can be a bit weird. HEY! I, uh, resemble that remark... Haha, well, yeah, I was born that way.
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Post by pawntake on Jul 10, 2020 8:05:17 GMT
Welcome! As for the below, I have been a cd collector for 31 years now, I can honestly say all mine are still in working order, no scratches or jumps. That is all.. LOL :-) * Gotta say, I laughed a bit at that discussion of CDs. I get the drive to preserve our media to the greatest except ent possible, but really, CDs are just about the worst storage medium I can imagine. CDs scratch! No matter how you store them, small vibrations will produce micro friction and over time they will imevitably accumulate dozens, then hundreds, of small scratches, and eventually wind up nonfunctional. Most disc media is susceptible to this. The last DVDs I bought, 8 years ago, were only watched once... when I opened them to to try again a single disc had managed to get a few very small, almost imperceptible scratches (just from the vibrations produced by me walking past the shelf it sat on) and was unplayable past a certain point. AFAIK the only reliable long-term physical media storage is Blu-Ray, as the discs are coated in an incredibly durable film that, I'm told, ought to keep them in pristine condition for 50+ years. Anyway, the optimal solution to storing your Big Finish dramas in perpetuity is going to be a solid state drive and/or cloud backups. ADWF Time for that car boot sale!!Or should i say many,many car boot sales!!!
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Post by aussiedoctorwhofan on Jul 10, 2020 8:34:54 GMT
ADWF Time for that car boot sale!!Or should i say many,many car boot sales!!!
My gawd !! LOLZ
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Post by Ian McArdell on Jul 14, 2020 9:43:47 GMT
My take on Stranded 1 is now up on cultbox.co.uk/reviews/stranded-1 - I'm on the fence about it. Some great performances, but is it great Doctor Who? Lots of character, not so much action. Might be a set that makes more sense when you've heard the rest.
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Post by iainbenson on Jul 16, 2020 10:39:05 GMT
I've just finished listening to Stranded, and was somewhat puzzled by the ending of part 3. It seems to end, at around 40 minutes, on a cliffhanger (Mr Bird confirming he is in fact watching them), cutting very abruptly to the theme tune, and the issue of who he is and what he was up to is never resolved. I'd assumed it would be resolved in episode 4, but other than a throwaway remark about him, it wasn't ever really touched on.
I listened to the m4b download, and checked it was the same, and was wondering if anyone who has it on CD can confirm whether it also ends there, or if they have missed some tracks off the download version.
I've e-mailed Big Finish enquiries to as the same question, but just thought I'd see if anyone here had any thoughts, as I've only one comment higher up mentioning it, which strikes me as rather odd.
EDIT: Okay, that's interesting; I've had a response back, and the ending is as expected, so they have intentionally provided an unresolved cliffhanger part way through the series. I'm now very intrigued as to where they are going with that. Roll on volume 2.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2020 10:50:10 GMT
I finally gave this set a listen and I'm in two minds over it. I like the interactions and the chance to really get to know this team as people but then in an effort to ground things...it's all a bit uneventful. Even things that do have agency get brushed aside - Liv gets shot and this isn't mentioned in either story to follow. It was a bullet not a headache - but she's fine the next day. If you want to do grounded, actions like that need to have some consequences. I see a lot of "breath of fresh air" comments. Well, it is - and seems intentionally so after we've spend so long with this team being in the cosmos. I don't think it's a bad idea at all to give them all more room to develop. I'm just not sure that, Liv aside, anyone really does. I like most of the new additions to the house. McGann's Doctor has better chemistry with Robin than Helen. I thought Liv and Tania were a nice couple though at times you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a Liv set guest starring The Doctor as just about everything has Liv at the fore. Helen gets very little to do which is a shame as she's the one who could use some fleshing out but there's clearly time to get to that later. She spends most of her time just trying to get The Doctor to snap out of his funk. The scenes of her and The Doctor talking over his need to "fix" things were the highlight of the set for me. It got to the crux of The Doctor and without being too on the nose painted a picture of someone who NEEDS the danger, the villains, the deaths. He defines himself as how he reacts to them and when this set gets into The Doctor being lost without any agency to spur him on that's the best character work this incarnation has had in ages.
Episode 3 was an oddity. Under 40 minutes in and the end theme hits in with what I guess is a cliffhanger...that isn't referred to again. An open ending is one thing but that seemed to be a bona-fide cliffhanger that I really thought was being explored in EP 4. I thought the new insidious neighbour was responsible for The Doctor being on TV given that his entire M.O. was television set manipulation but no. Nothing to do with it. Again that's fine if we're just seeing Episodes 1-4 of Stranded's 16 episode run but as a set of it's own - and it's sold as such so I think it's fair to judge it as that - I didn't think there was enough payoff for even the minor events. Torchwood's Aliens and Gods "Seasons" do this well. They function as chunks of a whole run of sets but also have internal setups and payoffs in each box. We needed more of that here. It felt like a prologue box in a way the first boxes Dark Eyes, Doom Coaltion and Ravenous didn't.
I'm sorry, this bit won't be pretty but I have to say I thought The Curator's appearance was not just a damp squib but quite cynical - he added nothing but a famous face for the cover and a gimmick to sell the set on. I don't think more should be revealed about him but at the same time sticking him on the cover and in the first set seems to have been a hook to get people buying, since the same TARDIS team and contemporary setting aren't going to move the dial much themselves. I hate to think it's as corporate as exploiting people's love for Tom/curiosity over what/who The Curator is to market this set but after listening it's my honest takeaway.
Yet I really do like the dynamics set up. Helen gets to lighten up a bit, Liv's relationship is handed well, Tania's Torchwood connection is the kind of mystery that can be developed and by set's end it kinda felt a bit like mid-Pertwee in that we can maybe get out more into space and time but use contemporary Earth as the base of operations.
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dorney
Big Finish Creative Team
Likes: 3,073
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Post by dorney on Jul 19, 2020 15:29:51 GMT
On a purely technical note, this is as established in the continuity - Kaldorans heal more quickly than someone today would (it’s also how she gets better quite quickly post sky dive in Their Finest Hour). Had Helen been shot, she wouldn’t have been over it as quickly.
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Post by johnhurtdoctor on Jul 20, 2020 18:24:30 GMT
To be honest I was not sold on this, because its another multipart box set & I have no interest in seeing the Curator again. As I feared his appearance in the first episode didn't work for me. I'm sure the writer thought they were being cryptic & elusive but it was just confirming that he is a future Doctor. It had none of the elegance of the writing in Day of the Doctor & his character didn't really seem to have much point other than as a wink to the fans, a cynical marketing exercise. It could have easily been another Doctor/character in that role, in fact imagine if we had had 10 appear, uncredited as a nice surprise. Apart from that the first episode was fine, mainly a set-up of the situation.
Wild Animals on the other hand was fantastic! The Doctor feeling 'stranded', real world tragedy pushing him into Doctor mode, the wonderfully written & acted blossoming romance between Liv & Tania. The 3rd episode had a nice mystery but it ended on a cliffhanger that's pretty much forgotten about in the final story & also what happens to Liv in the previous adventure is not even mentioned again. Also not a fan of Torchwood so the addition of them didn't work for me, especially making Tania an agent of Torchwod. It took something away from her character & I preferred her to be a normal person without a hidden agenda.
Divine Intervention was good with some nice comedy & character moments alongside the mystery but I would have preferred some more stories like Wild Animals which focus on non-sci-fi/alien plots, we are only on set one & already we have aliens & the Doc about to take the TARDIS on a test drive! So overall this is similar to a lot of 8th Doctor boxsets in that its only about 50% successful.
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Post by xlozdob on Jul 25, 2020 15:06:05 GMT
I was thinking about Ace's timeline (sparked by Alien Werewolf in London) and how she's never really interacted with other Doctors. So Eight came to mind, and now that we have a concrete storyline with an older Ace (even if we're still not sure what happened in the middle), I came to the conclusion that they might want to continue Ace's A Charitable Earth storyline with Stranded. ACE is based in contemporary London, where Stranded is set, and since the TV show probably won't pick it up, that's the next best thing. What do you guys think? Would you like to see that? Or is it too much already with {Spoiler} Torchwood and the Curator involved already?
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Post by tuigirl on Jul 25, 2020 16:04:24 GMT
I was thinking about Ace's timeline (sparked by Alien Werewolf in London) and how she's never really interacted with other Doctors. So Eight came to mind, and now that we have a concrete storyline with an older Ace (even if we're still not sure what happened in the middle), I came to the conclusion that they might want to continue Ace's A Charitable Earth storyline with Stranded. ACE is based in contemporary London, where Stranded is set, and since the TV show probably won't pick it up, that's the next best thing. What do you guys think? Would you like to see that? Or is it too much already with {Spoiler} Torchwood and the Curator involved already? Bring it on! Maybe we get a better consolidation of their relationship if Ace has to deal with a different Doctor, who actually has the capacity to feel sorry and who regrets some of the things 7 has done.
That would be an exciting dynamic.
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Tony Jones
Chancellery Guard
Professor Chronotis
Still rockin' along!
Likes: 2,132
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Post by Tony Jones on Jul 25, 2020 19:22:09 GMT
I was thinking about Ace's timeline (sparked by Alien Werewolf in London) and how she's never really interacted with other Doctors. So Eight came to mind, and now that we have a concrete storyline with an older Ace (even if we're still not sure what happened in the middle), I came to the conclusion that they might want to continue Ace's A Charitable Earth storyline with Stranded. ACE is based in contemporary London, where Stranded is set, and since the TV show probably won't pick it up, that's the next best thing. What do you guys think? Would you like to see that? Or is it too much already with {Spoiler} Torchwood and the Curator involved already? Ace was one of the options I came up with in a rather insane list... redrocketrising.com/2020/07/21/who-else-might-be-stranded-with-the-eighth-doctor/
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Post by theillusiveman on Jul 28, 2020 10:14:48 GMT
I Wonder if or when we will get a fresh start for 8 like how Blood of The Daleks and Dark Eyes were with a new companion...
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Post by johnhurtdoctor on Jul 28, 2020 10:34:29 GMT
I was thinking about Ace's timeline (sparked by Alien Werewolf in London) and how she's never really interacted with other Doctors. So Eight came to mind, and now that we have a concrete storyline with an older Ace (even if we're still not sure what happened in the middle), I came to the conclusion that they might want to continue Ace's A Charitable Earth storyline with Stranded. ACE is based in contemporary London, where Stranded is set, and since the TV show probably won't pick it up, that's the next best thing. What do you guys think? Would you like to see that? Or is it too much already with {Spoiler} Torchwood and the Curator involved already? I would have preferred Ace in the Curator role.
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Post by barnabaslives on Aug 7, 2020 6:30:12 GMT
I'm still saving half this set until hopefully closer to the halfway mark to Stranded 2, but something does occur to me since my only complaint with the first two stories so far being that I thought that too big a deal was being made over how lost The Doctor is without a TARDIS and a universe to save - my justification being that this would have seemed very uncharacteristic for the Third Doctor. Well.
In fairness, the Eight Doctor is not the Third Doctor, and if I simply bear that in mind it will be a perfect set so far with no complaints whatsoever.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2020 6:53:11 GMT
I loved Stranded 1. Very different in tone to what I've always been used to, in such a unique style. And bringing the Curator and Torchwood's Sergeant Andy Davidson along? Just welcoming nostalgia. Can't wait for Volume 2!
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Post by elkawho on Aug 7, 2020 11:38:13 GMT
I'm still saving half this set until hopefully closer to the halfway mark to Stranded 2, but something does occur to me since my only complaint with the first two stories so far being that I thought that too big a deal was being made over how lost The Doctor is without a TARDIS and a universe to save - my justification being that this would have seemed very uncharacteristic for the Third Doctor. Well. In fairness, the Eight Doctor is not the Third Doctor, and if I simply bear that in mind it will be a perfect set so far with no complaints whatsoever. He addresses that. It seems having UNIT and the responsibilities that came with the role of scientific advisor was enough to keep him going in the short term. Now he has none of those things and doesn't know what to do with himself.
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Post by theillusiveman on Aug 7, 2020 11:43:24 GMT
I'm still saving half this set until hopefully closer to the halfway mark to Stranded 2, but something does occur to me since my only complaint with the first two stories so far being that I thought that too big a deal was being made over how lost The Doctor is without a TARDIS and a universe to save - my justification being that this would have seemed very uncharacteristic for the Third Doctor. Well. In fairness, the Eight Doctor is not the Third Doctor, and if I simply bear that in mind it will be a perfect set so far with no complaints whatsoever. I Know what you mean and its weird that The 8th Doctor has been stranded twice without a TARDIS In The Eighth Doctor Adventure Books After he destroyed Gallifrey and got amnesia he spent several decades on Earth living (Father Time is a really highly recommended book)
& The Eighth Doctor Adventures Audios with Lucie Miller he was stuck on Orbis for 600 Years
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Post by barnabaslives on Aug 7, 2020 12:56:55 GMT
I'm still saving half this set until hopefully closer to the halfway mark to Stranded 2, but something does occur to me since my only complaint with the first two stories so far being that I thought that too big a deal was being made over how lost The Doctor is without a TARDIS and a universe to save - my justification being that this would have seemed very uncharacteristic for the Third Doctor. Well. In fairness, the Eight Doctor is not the Third Doctor, and if I simply bear that in mind it will be a perfect set so far with no complaints whatsoever. He addresses that. It seems having UNIT and the responsibilities that came with the role of scientific advisor was enough to keep him going in the short term. Now he has none of those things and doesn't know what to do with himself. Yes, exactly. Even when the Third Doctor was stranded, he had monsters to save the world from, whereas the Eight Doctor has only his neighbors to save the world from, lol. That did manage to go over my head until now though. The Eighth Doctor Adventures Audios with Lucie Miller he was stuck on Orbis for 600 Years Thanks. I did take that into consideration also in changing my mind - not only is the Eight incarnation a few Doctors removed from the Third, but the Eight may have been a particularly lengthy one because of that.
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